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Allen selected as dean of architecture school

Posted April 17, 2002; 05:07 p.m.

by etu

Stan Allen, an educator and practicing architect in New York City, has been selected as dean of the
School of Architecture
at Princeton University.

His appointment, effective July 1, was approved April 13 by the Board of Trustees. He will succeed Ralph Lerner, who last June announced his plans to step down as dean after 13 years.

Allen earned a master of architecture degree from Princeton in 1988 after completing a bachelor of arts degree in architectural history from Brown University and a bachelor of architecture degree from Cooper Union's School of Architecture. Since 1990, he has been a faculty member in Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. He also has served as director of its master of science in advanced architectural design program since 1991.

A registered architect in private practice, he is founding principal and director of Field Operations, an interdisciplinary design practice in partnership with landscape architect James Corner.

"Stan Allen is just the right person to lead our architecture school at this point in its history," said President Shirley M. Tilghman. "He is a teacher, administrator, scholar and practicing architect. His professional work spans the breadth of our distinctive school that offers a liberal arts education for undergraduates, Ph.D. training for scholars and a professional masters degree for architecture students." Founded in 1919, Princeton's School of Architecture enrolls approximately 120 students in bachelor's, master's and doctoral degree programs.

"As an architect who has always had a deep commitment to teaching, I am very excited by the challenge of the Princeton deanship," Allen said. "The school is in a strong position, with a distinguished faculty, a supportive administration and talented students. We will build on the school's strengths at the same time that we move forward in the areas of urbanism, technology, media and design."

In addition to teaching seminar, lecture and advanced studio classes at Columbia, Allen has coordinated admissions, faculty and curriculum for the advanced design program.

This teaching work has been complemented by an extensive body of theoretical and critical writings that have appeared in Assemblage, where he was projects editor from 1989 to 2000, as well as in numerous other journals. His urban projects have been published in "In Points and Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the City" (Princeton Architectural Press, 1999) and his theoretical essays in "Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation" (G+B Arts International, 2000).

The recipient of numerous design awards, fellowships and competition prizes, Allen has designed galleries, workspaces and single-family houses that have been built in New York, Los Angeles and abroad. He and Corner created Field Operations in 1999 to provide innovative, high-quality design solutions for large-scale urban sites and public spaces. The firm recently was awarded first prize in an invited competition for the re-use of Fresh Kills in Staten Island, the world's largest landfill site. In 2000, Allen and Corner won the competition for a garden at the French Consulate in New York, and were finalists in invited competitions for the 320-acre Downsview Park in Toronto and the Battery Park Hunger Memorial in New York. Current projects include buildings at Paju Book City, an urban wetland outside of Seoul, Korea; a prototype weekend house in Sagaponac, N.Y.; and a major land-use planning and infrastructural design study encompassing 12 miles of the North Delaware waterfront in Philadelphia.